Imperfect Paradise: From ranchers with guns to gurus with crystals: How extremism in the American West has evolved

California Love

LAist Studios

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4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Portland, Oregon-based reporter Leah Sottile began covering extremism in the American West a decade ago, she was interviewing ranchers, fundamentalist Mormons and “sovereign citizens” who did not believe the federal government should own land. During the pandemic, she began noticing that New Age wellness leaders were talking about many of the same ideas. “I just couldn't quite reconcile the aesthetic difference. Like these weren't people in camouflage, they were like in yoga pants talking about the same thing.” Leah Sottile talks to LAist Correspondent Emily Guerin about how extremism has evolved, as well as her new book, “Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for LAIS comes from A Better Way to Move, a family-owned local moving company providing moving and storage services for most of LA in Orange County. More information at A Better Way to Move.com. Have you entered our spring super sweeps? You could win a new BMW or $30,000 in cash. Upweight e-bikes, a staycation at Marriott Long Beach downtown, or a fender
0:23.5	guitar. You're automatically entered when you donate $60 for local news. Give now at lAS.com slash
0:29.1	sweeps. Hey, you're listening to Imperfect Paradise. I'm Antonia Citi Hito.
0:36.9	There have been a lot of stories recently about people and groups radicalizing and adopting more extreme views.
0:44.2	These stories have increasingly become part of the national conversation.
0:48.5	The radicalization in this country is largely taking place online and on social media.
0:53.0	Some influencers in wellness communities are using their platform to promote conspiracy theories.
0:59.3	It used to be that Q&ON seemed loopy, and then all of a sudden, aspects of it are now in sort of normal,
1:04.5	what used to be normal Republican politics.
1:06.9	Five years ago, if you believed in aliens, or you were talking about aliens, you were conspiracy theorists.
1:12.4	Now that's just in your Apple news feed.
1:17.0	Radicalization has been Portland, Oregon-based independent journalist Leah Sotili's Beat for the past decade.
1:23.2	She started out covering right-wing radicalization in the rural American West.
1:27.9	But her latest book tackles conspiracy theories and cults in a different segment of American society, New Age Wellness Circles.
1:35.8	It's called Blazing Eye Sees All Love Has Won, False prophets and the fever dream of the American New Age.
1:43.0	So Tilly notes that increasingly, it seems like all kinds of people from across the political
1:47.3	spectrum believe conspiracies and hold beliefs that government, laws, and society need to be
1:52.4	radically transformed.
1:54.3	What does it mean for fringe views when they go mainstream?
2:00.4	My colleague Emily Garen has reported on radicalization extensively herself.
2:05.0	If you haven't heard her Imperfect Paradise series, People v. Karen, or Yoga's Queen
2:09.2	of Conspiracy theories, I highly recommend them.
	...

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